A SIGN OF SPRING

Spring brings wisps of green to weeping willows. It
means March Madness, Daylight Saving Time and St.
Patrick's Day.

It also marks the return of the Delaware General
Assembly to Dover. Oh well, even spring has to have a
discouraging word somewhere.

The legislature's first day back from a six-week
break for budget hearings was Tuesday, and it had all
the energy of a yawn. After all of the snow and the
shivering cold snap, people acted not quite awake from a
long winter's nap.

There was a press conference here on foreclosures,
and a lone bill there on drug offenses in the House of
Representatives, but the Senate did not even have an
agenda.

Still, it might have been the best legislative day
ever in the brief tenure of Harvey Kenton, a Milford
Republican who is mere months into his first term as a
Republican representative. Miss Delaware was
visiting Legislative Hall, and he had the bragging
rights. He is her great-uncle.

Barely a skeleton crew of lobbyists bothered to show
up. One of them was Mike Begatto, the executive director
of the public employees union, although he could have
been invisible for all the attention he attracted. Read
it and weep, Wisconsin.

The only bustle was in the vicinity of the governor's
office. Jack Markell, the Democratic governor halfway
through his first term, prowled the hallway outside his
office and met with people inside. This was not
surprising.

The governor always gives the impression he is on a
war footing. There are no days to spare. He acts as
though he has to work hard, or the next job lost could
be his own.

The return to Dover also meant the tipoff of the
annual spring fund-raiser follies. By one count, there
were 22 receptions scheduled between now and the end of
April, the better for the legislators to get into the
lobbyists' wallets when the lobbyists need the
legislators the most.

The first one Tuesday evening was a joint fund-raiser
for Helene Keeley and Mike Mulrooney, a pair of
Democratic representatives, at McGlynns Pub
alongside Silver Lake. It had all the signs of a tune-up
for St. Patrick's Day. If it was not quite time for the
wearing o' the green, it was fine for the lobbyists'
bearing o' the green.

It would not be Legislative Hall without at least
some petty skullduggery. This one involved an old trick
of time travel.

By longstanding practice, the Senate and the House do
not adjourn one legislative day until they are ready to
begin another. This meant the legislative calendar
technically still read January 26, the last day before
the break, when the lawmakers assembled on Tuesday.

People who did not get to Dover back on January 26 --
because of slick roads or sickness or something better
to do -- could still be marked present, and they were.

Hey, it helps the attendance record. Do the
voters have to know everything?

There are legitimate reasons for an absence, of
course, and so the House had to return to a new sick
call. Debra Heffernan, a Democratic representative
from Brandywine Hundred, went on it, absent from Dover
because she tripped and broke her leg. JoAnn Hedrick,
the chief clerk emeritus, went off it, back in Dover
after missing all of January because of a fall that
broke both ankles.

Hedrick is getting around with the help of a
Roll-A-Bout, a type of walker-scooter combination made
by a company in Frederica. It was good, but not quite
good enough to get her up a short series of steps to her
customary place on the podium. The House does have a
ramp it uses to wheel up a file cabinet of legislation,
but it is steep.

"We didn't want to bring her up the way we do the
bills, because we're afraid she'll go backward," quipped
Bob Gilligan, the Democratic speaker.

As always, each chamber opened its proceedings with a
prayer, offered by a member. Greg Lavelle, the House
Republican minority leader, and Margaret Rose Henry, the
Senate Democratic majority whip, prayed in bipartisan
symmetry for the people in Japan.